Names
by GallonsoftheStuff
Summary: There is power in names, but Casey doesn't want to believe it. (Soulmate AU, cross-posted on AO3.)


**A/N:** Inspired by _All For One And One For All_ by zerousy on AO3.

* * *

 _"He's back."_

 _"There's a lady outside."_

Casey joins the other two girls at the door, ears straining to hear the whispered conversation on the other side.

 _"Dennis, admit what you've done."_

Her blood freezes at the name, the way it burns across the skin of her right abdomen, black ink partially obscured by scars. _It can't be_ , she thinks, denies, horror and dread heavy in her stomach.

But a part of her thinks _'of course'_. Of course part of her belongs to a man who can kidnap three girls and hold them captive.

She's so fucked up. Of course one of her soulmates is fucked up too.

She thinks that she might be underestimating just how fucked up when the door opens to the man dressed and talking as a woman.

* * *

 _"He's just trying to scare us."_

 _"He was having a full conversation with himself."_

 _"What was that line about? 'The food is waiting.'"_

 _"Does everyone get how whacked this is and that we need to get out of here now?"_

The door opens again, revealing the man—Dennis, she reminds herself, refusing to flinch from this truth, even if she won't share it with anyone else, least of all her soulmate—again, a bucket with spray bottles in his hand. He looks at them only briefly before he turns to the bathroom. Just as quickly, he turns away with an expression of pained disgust.

"No." Shaking his head, he looks at them again, frowning. "Please, keep your area neat. The bathroom, it's… unacceptable. To make it easy, I've color-coded these." He points to the bottles in the bucket. "Use the blue bottle for the floor and the pink bottle for the ceramic surfaces."

It's clear he expects them to do something and the three girls move to the bathroom, Casey taking the bucket. They're kneeling on the floor, looking up at him in the doorway, when he speaks again, hand rubbing over his shaved head.

"Uh... Patricia has reminded me that I was sent to get you for a reason. That you are sacred food. And I promise not to bother you again." With that, he leaves them again.

Barely, Casey keeps the bitter, startled laugh inside as the name that marks her lower back by her right hip burns. She wants to scream at the cosmos. Why? Why her? Why now?

* * *

She doesn't think about what it could mean until Marcia and Claire wake her later with whisper-hissed calls of her name.

The sight of the man sitting in the doorway, yellow tracksuit bright in the dimness, smiling at them, makes her sit up.

"My name is Hedwig. I have red socks."

This time when the messy scrawl on the top of her right foot burns, Casey shoves aside her hurt and anger. She thinks. The only things she knows about multiple personalities—she thinks there's another name for it, but she can't remember—comes from television and movies. She doesn't trust it to be real enough to help her or the others. But she thinks about what it might mean for the names scattered across her body.

It isn't what gives her courage to talk to Hedwig, question him, lie to him, block the door so Claire can escape, but it helps.

* * *

It all goes to hell anyway and she's left alone. Alone with her thoughts. Alone with stories of soulmate marks gone wrong running through her head.

She wants to believe that, if she just showed them her marks, they won't hurt her. But she doesn't let herself. Believing in the good of other people has never gotten her anywhere positive.

* * *

When she wakes again, it's to a warm body at her back, an arm wrapped around her, and bile rises in her throat, fear making her skin cold.

"It wasn't nice, what you said about Miss Patricia. You lied." His lisping voice, little boy words from a grown man's body, does nothing to put her at ease as he pushes himself up using her hip so he can look at her.

"I'm sorry about that, Hedwig."

"You guys lied to me. Made me scared. Etcetera." In what she thinks might be typical Hedwig fashion, he doesn't linger on this. "Mr. Dennis, he says you wear a lot of shirts. I like this shirt."

"Thank you." It occurs to her that Dennis might take her last shirt. That the choice to reveal her marks might not be hers at all. She doesn't know how to feel about that.

"Do you know who Dennis and Miss Patricia are?"

"No." It's not exactly a lie. The only thing she really knows is that somehow they're her soulmates and that they've kidnapped her and the others.

"Every one of us has to wait in a chair, and Barry, he decides who stands in the light."

A name just above her left knee tingles, not quite the burn of learning the others' names, and she thinks she must not have seen Barry yet. She wonders if she will.

"But Barry lost that power because of me."

Her heart sinks and she wonders what it might have been like to meet Barry first. Was he a good person? Would she have been scared to show him his name on her skin, or the many others?

"I can wish myself into the light anytime I want," Hedwig continues, clearly proud. "It's a special power. Barry just has to keep sitting in his chair if I want him to.

"That's why Dennis and Miss Patricia said I could be with them. Dennis and Miss Patricia, they believe in The Beast and what he can do."

Another tingle, this one frightening her, from the name-that-wasn't-a-name inked below the left side of her ribcage. Again she has to swallow nearly hysterical laughter. Were any of her soulmates _normal_?

* * *

The walkie-talkie was unexpected and using it goes as well as can be expected for an improvised plan. What worries her the most isn't the fact that the man on the other end of the radio didn't believe her—it's that Hedwig didn't react at all to her name. A part of her wants to dismiss that. He was too upset, too focused on stopping her to actually pay attention to what she was saying.

She doesn't believe it though. At least one of them knows her name and it didn't stop them from trying to hurt her.

It makes her almost grateful when Dennis tells her he won't take her last shirt. Seeing the marks won't stop them. Just like always, no one can save her. No one but herself.

* * *

She notices the file names on the computer only after she fails to connect to the internet twice. The various marks on her body tingle as she reads them all, intimately familiar with each one. She lets that distract her for only a moment before she starts clicking on the video diaries, hoping one of them has something that might help her escape.

Orwell. Jade. Barry. She leaves Barry's video playing as she searches for keys, something, anything, to get the second door open. A part of her wants to curse the man for not talking to whoever Dr. Fletcher is—maybe this never would have happened if he had. Maybe she would have met him—or Jade, or Orwell, Heinrich, Norma, Goddard, _any_ of them—instead of being kidnapped by Dennis to be fed to The Beast. Maybe she wouldn't be terrified of her own soulmate. Soulmates.

The jingle of keys draws her back to the computer and just like that, Barry has given her the means to her freedom.

But when she looks for the others to get them out too… _oh god_. Bolting the door on the creature devouring Claire—she's not even sure she's _dead_ yet, or just too far gone to react—she races through the kitchen.

There's another body in the other room, but Casey doesn't have time to dwell on it, struggling to get the right key into the lock before The Beast catches up and does to her what he's done to Marcia and Claire— _oh god, Marcia and Claire, oh god_.

 _No, no, don't think about it_.

There's too many keys and not enough time to go through them all. She goes to the desk, starting to search when the paper catches her eye. Her heart sinks at the name written there at the same time the skin around her belly button tingles. It hadn't been on the computer, but here it is.

A noise behind her has her spinning, calling his name as the paper says, hoping against hope that it does something, stops him in his tracks like magic. _He's climbing the wall, he's climbing the wall, there's no way, he can't, I can't—!_

And it works. He drops, stumbles, moves out of sight into the kitchen. The man who comes out of the kitchen, a blanket around his shoulders, isn't The Beast, isn't Dennis or Patricia or Hedwig. The mark burns this time when she looks at him, knowing his name.

He looks at Dr. Fletcher—the sweet woman Barry should have talked to, who might have prevented this whole nightmare—and he tells her where the shotgun is. Tells her to kill him.

The words tear at her heart, but Casey doesn't hesitate more than a moment before shifting her weight towards the cabinet. She doesn't want to kill her soulmate, but at least she can be armed if one of the others takes control again.

"Wait, no! Don't do that!" He rushes towards her, voice and manner different, unfamiliar. "He can't handle reality. My name is Jade." A sob builds in her throat, the name burning at her left collarbone, half obscured by scars. "Has Dr. Fletcher been getting our emails? This is what we have to do."

His expression twists, muscles tensing, and when he speaks again, Casey recognizes the scholarly dialogue from Orwell's video diary. His mark mirrors Jade's on the right, burning.

The hiccup of sound escapes her as it happens again. "Everybody, just take a _minute_!" It's clear he's not talking to her, but then he is, his hand on her cheek warm and his voice apologetic, reassuring. The mark above her left knee burns and she knows his name before he tells her. "Oh, baby girl. They've been stealing control of the light from me. But the group are gonna work through this. Honey, my name is Barry."

For half a second, she lets that reassure her, thinks that maybe she won't need the gun. She even thinks that she could show him the marks, ask… if her name is inked on his body the way all of theirs mark hers.

But then Hedwig is in control again, admonishing her, and then it is Patricia in front of her.

The talisman of Kevin's name doesn't work this time.

Casey is on her own.

She grabs the gun and runs.

* * *

The ammunition is where Kevin said it would be. She wastes two shots, trying to catch him while he's moving—she hasn't been hunting in years, her aim is off, she's shaking, her ripped shirt is in the way, her leg _burns_ in a way that has nothing to do with a mark and everything to do with the way he ripped it open with his teeth.

Safe behind the iron bars of the cage, she throws the ruined shirt off and raises the gun. Her last two shots hit him—she can hardly miss when he's so close—but, to her horror and disbelief, he stands after only a moment on his knees, the wounds barely bleeding.

He wasn't lying. He isn't human. As if she didn't have enough proof of that already, he grasps the bars and begins to pull. The metal moves apart with a tortured groan.

Casey lowers the gun, shifting her grip—maybe she can hit him with it, she thinks desperately, distract him enough to get through that other door—when he finally looks at her, _truly_ looks at her.

She isn't sure if it is the scars or the names, but he is no longer bending the metal bars, his eyes glued to the skin she has been hiding all along.

"You are… _different_ from the rest."

The tears she thought she had gotten under control start to spill again.

"Your heart is _pure_." He looks into her eyes and Casey isn't sure she sees her death there anymore. "Rejoice," he tells her, the word echoing around them. "The broken are the more evolved." His voice softens, eyes almost closed in some personal rapture. " _Rejoice_."

He steps away from the bars and for a moment, Casey thinks it might be over. That he will leave, that she will be able to get out and find someone to help her.

But then he says, "You have my name, Casey Cooke. You have all our names." And she knows that he isn't letting her go. That he might never let her go.

The thought scares her less now, staring back at The Beast, his black eyes clear and steady. He isn't looking at her like he was—no more hunger, no more rage.

He looks at her like she is God.

* * *

 **A/N:** I didn't really believe that Casey wouldn't have noticed that the names match up to her marks (in _All for One and One for All_ ) and wanted to explore a smidge of how she reacts to that. (Also my personal preference for Soulmate AUs, in which the marks are less passive in letting someone know they've met their soulmate.)


End file.
